Do the Novice Locks/Apprentice Locks perks have any impact on higher locks? I'm wondering if I should put any perks into Lockpicking at all, as Quick Hands is the only iteresting one of all. But seeing how Novice locks are trivially easy to pick and Apprentice locks are easy enough, perking those seems pointless.

Only Master locks are a challenge, so if perking low-lvl locks does have an impact on them, it certiantly would be worth it. The only question: Does it?

A good question. However I decided not to waste points on the lockpicking tree. Even Expert and Master locks only take 3-4 lockpicks to open with a little practice. Lockpicks are also very cheap and on just about every bandit you kill. I felt the points would be better spent elsewhere.
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JoeFishJan 6 '12 at 21:08

+1 to @JoeFish. With the ridiculous abundance of Lockpicks in the world, and their extremely low price, I don't see any point in spending perks on Lockpicking - even when I do sometimes go through twenty or so picks on Expert or Master locks.
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IsziJan 6 '12 at 21:13

@Iszi Sounds like an even better reason to just not get caught to me ;)
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JamesJan 6 '12 at 23:10

1

For some weird reason, a lot of the good upstanding Citizens of Skyrim seem to have at least one lockpick in their inventory. They have a very high chance to steal to too... so if you find yourself running low on lockpicks, just stop at the nearest town and take a peek into people's pockets.
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OrioNJan 11 '12 at 19:31

2 Answers
2

The descriptions of the perks only refer to one level of lock, so I am certain that the lower level perks do not have any effect on the higher level locks. Even if they did, I don't think that it would be worth it to get the lower level perks just to have higher level locks be easier to pick.

Yes, the descriptions make it quite clear that only one level of a lock is meant to be affected. But seeing how many glitches/expliots/cross-relations there arr I figured, maybe someone did already try this out if it is indeed the case
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EvgeniJan 7 '12 at 12:20

They low level perks won't affect high level locks, but the perks for high level locks require you to take the low level perks as a prerequisite. Thus, to get perks to make Master locks easier to pick, you need to spend (waste?) perks on the easier locks.